Choir and Bowties
by tomhiddlest0ner
Summary: Rachel Berry encounters the Doctor in New York City and soon steps into the TARDIS to be whisked away from the reality that wasn't what she expected it to be. Plus... all of time and space sounds pretty nice, doesn't it? One-Shot.


Choir and Bowties.

Rachel Berry had been in New York for exactly one week and three days when she saw the police box where it should not have been. Innocently, the brunette had crossed an alleyway and let her eyes wander down the dark corridor for just a moment before a deep frown creased her brow. What in the world was a police box doing in the middle of New York City in this day and age? Surely those things weren't even used anymore. And why would it be all the way down there, too? Gosh, that was inconvenient. Curiosity getting the better of her, Rachel Berry cautiously began toward the unfamiliar blue box, the frown still etched into her features.

If there was one thing Rachel Berry hated, it was being confused. She was a woman that always needed answers and when someone else couldn't provide them, everyone could be sure as hell that Rachel would find them herself. She let her fingertips brush the wood of the box, raising an eyebrow when she realised that it was, in fact, a real-life police box. Her initial thought had been some kind of cardboard cut-out or even some talented graffiti artists. But alas, the box was a real box. Perhaps it had been dumped here as garbage, she thought to herself as her hand clamped around the silver handle. She gave a tug as the instructions read, sighing in frustration when nothing happened. Well then, that was a bust. She had gotten all excited for nothing.

However, a second after she let go of the handle with a disappointed look on her delicate features, the door opened the opposite way and, from the inside, a rather peculiar looking man had pulled to open. Rachel blinked at him, frowning at his ignorance. "You're not supposed to do the door that way, Sir," she told him rather pointedly. "It says, from the outside, 'push to open'."

The man hadn't realised that the tiny girl was even there; having called over his shoulder to someone that Rachel was sure wasn't even in this damned box. How could more than one person fit in the police box, anyhow? Nearly colliding with the short girl, the strange man jumped back, almost stumbling over the side of the box as he gave a yelp. "Surprise attack!" he cried, turning back into the box and slamming the door. "That's not fair!"

Rachel stifled a laugh. "What are you talking about?" she called through the door of the box, bemused and also quite sorry for the clearly mentally incapable man. He opened the door the wrong way again just enough for his narrowed eyes to see Rachel.

"You can't surprise someone like that, that's not fair," he stated. "If you want to kill me, at least tell me first, that's the polite thing to do."

Rolling her eyes, Rachel nodded in the direction of the police box door. "The polite thing to do would be opening the door the correct way. I'm sure the box doesn't appreciate your lack of door opening skills at all, mister." The man smiled at this.

"Oh, I can't help it. Pushing is better than pulling, and she doesn't mind all that much, she told me. She got used to it over the years."

Rachel blinked. "What on earth are you talking about?" she asked, utterly confused with the man. She eyed his tweed jacket, bowtie and suspenders, thinking that he looked like someone out of a Broadway production. It was quite a nice change, she'd admit, from the low-hanging pants hardly dressed hookers that riddled the streets of New York. "Who are you?"

"Me?" the man asked, opening the door fully. "I'm the Doctor. Who are you?"

"Doctor... who?" Rachel asked, still frowning. Gosh, she'd have frown lines before the day was out at this rate. "I'm Rachel Berry, a star in the making."

The Doctor narrowed his eyes, studying her. "You don't look like a star at all," he replied. "Stars as big balls of light that are probably a thousand times your size and you're a little human. How do you manage that? Identity crisis, perhaps?" Rachel scoffed and rolled her eyes. This man was clearly mental. She peered over his shoulder, looking inside the police box and blinking at what she saw.

Pushing past the odd man, she stepped into the box and spun on the spot, utterly mesmerized with the thousands of corridors and how big it was. She turned to the man who was smirking with pride. "It's bigger on the inside!" she cried. Oh, this must have been some optical illusion on the outside. Rachel would bet her voice on the face that this was some kind of secret building for a secret organisation, designed to look like a lonely police box in an alley. Oh, no... She hadn't stumbled into a mob, had she? She let out a squeak and turned to leave, bumping into the bowtie'd man. "I have to go," she mumbled.

"Go? Why? I was beginning to like you, you know," he told her, pinching his eyebrows together.

"I shouldn't be here – this place is dangerous," Rachel replied, stepping away from him. The man before her chortled, amused with her.

"Dangerous? Hardly. Well... slightly. But that's beside the point. What if I could offer you the whole of time and space, Rachel Berry? I could take you anywhere, any time that has ever existed. Past, future, whathaveyou."

Now, this was getting a tad far-fetched, wasn't it? Surely this man was joking. "I just came from a visit to Mary Shakespeare," he continued on, nodding his head. "I had to tell her that we couldn't elope. She was very unhappy about that, to be honest. It never would have worked out, though. What if Shakespeare had a daddy for an alien? I bet Romeo and Juliet would have turned out a tad differently."

"Are you mad?" Rachel cried, shaking her head. "You're mad!" The Doctor smiled at those words, shrugging passively.

"And I have a box. A blue box that soars through time and space, which sounds nice, doesn't it?"

"Before... you called out to someone, when we bumped into each other. Who was it?" Rachel asked, becoming slightly intrigued with this mad man.

"I was talking to my box," he replied. "I wanted to go to Suffolk, England, but she brought me here instead."

Rachel blinked even more. "Take me to Barbra, then. Barbra Streisand. 1949 was when she gave her first solo performance at the age of seven at her school, the Jewish Orthodox Yeshiva of Brooklyn and that's where I want to be."

Seeing Barbra's first performance was something Rachel had always desired, but achieving this was impossible. Well, not according to this man it wasn't. It was worth a shot, wasn't it? She looked at him hopefully and he gave a nod, closing the police box door and hopping over to what looked like a huge control pad in the centre of the large room they stood in. Rachel took the time to look around, appreciating were she was. In its own way, the interior of this so-called time machine was quite pretty. At the same time, though, Rachel wanted to gouge her eyes out. What a disaster. Kurt would have a field day if he ever got to redecorate in here, she thought, smiling softly to herself. "You know," she started, turning toward him. "You never did tell me, Doctor who exactly?"

"Just the Doctor," was his reply, followed by a small, almost sad looking smile. Rachel frowned but didn't press the matter. It wasn't as though she'd be staying with him forever. Soon, the police box began to make a sort of groaning noise. This lasted about a minute before Rachel began to freak out.

"What just happened?" she demanded. The Doctor smiled.

"We're about to go meet Barbra."


End file.
